


I'm Friends with the Monster That's Under My Bed

by midnight12181



Series: 100 Themes (2016) [1]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Gen, Introspection, identity issues sorta, musing on scars, season 1 oliver
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-25
Updated: 2016-06-25
Packaged: 2018-07-18 03:02:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7296862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/midnight12181/pseuds/midnight12181
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five years without looking in a mirror to see if the skin has changed as much as what lies beneath.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'm Friends with the Monster That's Under My Bed

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Eminem's The Monster

Five years away from the place you called home. Five years reevaluating your life, your choices, the path you’ve taken to get from then to now. Five years learning just what it would take to drive you to kill. Five years learning, honing,  _ wielding _ the darkness inside you. Five years learning where your humanity ends and the monster you cultivated begins. Five years, shifting your priorities, the way you looked at the world, who you were down at your very core to survive - and later, to  _ thrive _ .

Five years without looking in a mirror to see if the skin has changed as much as what lies beneath.

Oliver stared at the antique full length mirror that sat across the room from the bed. The door was closed, locked. He knew that. Had checked it no less than four times before entering the adjoining shower and another three times since exiting. There was a small, nearly silent part of him that was still the fun-loving playboy, and it liked to remind him that what he was doing, what he was always doing, was paranoid as shit.

He stepped closer to the mirror, the towel he’d dried himself off with slung low on his hips. Oliver looked at his face as he let that carefree smile grace his lips. The corners pulled up just slightly. His teeth shown, for once not bared in a snarl, in a warning. It looked a lot less fake than it felt, which Oliver supposed was good. The only purpose he saw for keeping that part of himself alive - party boy Ollie Queen - was to wear him like a disguise around the people of his old life. People who expected and trusted the idiot who couldn’t see the world past the rim of a rocks glass. People who wouldn’t be able to handle the monster he’d had to become.

Oliver let his face return to resting, looking at his facial features. Gone was the baby fat that lingered around his cheeks. Gone was the clean-shaven face. Gone was the mop of long hair that hung into his eyes. Gone was the easy smile and even easier laugh. In their place, a strong jaw held just enough stubble to keep him camouflaged in foliage. Hair cropped too short to catch on anything or be used to hold him down. His hand lifted, fingers touching his face as if he couldn’t believe what he saw. He looked even more like his father than he remembered. He looked stern, serious, and when he snarled low in the back of his throat, his lips curled up in a sneer, he looked  _ dangerous _ .

His fingers traveled lower, down the curve of his neck, over his left shoulder to the deep scar there. It was long, deep, and from a wound he’d rather not dwell upon. Oliver watched his fingers slip slightly lower, to the tattoo he’d gotten signifying his membership in the Solntsevskaya Bratva. The dark, black lines of the multi pointed star were a sharp contrast on his pale skin. Inked in a way to save his life, a complete difference from his high school plan to cover his arms in ridiculous, meaningless symbols and colour. Just to the side of that were claw marks, an encounter with a creature as feral as he’d nearly become. It was kill or be killed, and he had chosen the former. Across to the other side of his chest, practically mirroring the tattoo, was the arrow wound from his first encounter with Yao Fei, the man who’d been the catalyst of his transformation from snobby child to the creature he’d become.

That wasn’t entirely true. Yao Fei had only presented words to describe his options. They had always been there. Continue to be the child he was and die, or become something else and live. The choice had always been Oliver’s.

Fingers travelling further down, he brushed them across the mysterious set of Chinese symbols that had been a gift, a promise of protection from one John Constantine. Billing himself as the real deal when it came to magic, Oliver had believed him nothing more than a charlatan. Constantine had ultimately proved his mettle, proved his loyalties, and proved that he was as much the ‘master of the dark arts’ he proclaimed to be. Oliver sincerely hoped, though, that he would never need to call upon their friendship. Magic in general made him… uncomfortable. 

Across from that was the knife wound from Billy Wintergreen, Slade Wilson’s partner. The man wasn’t nearly as insane as Wilson was, but he was just as fiercely loyal… as evidenced by the scar from his torture session. Under that, the shark bite from when he’d gone to retrieve a map from a sunken ship.

The rest of his body was just as covered in scars and old wounds as his chest, but those were far more difficult to view just standing in front of a mirror. Those were stories he didn’t want to contemplate - not that he wanted to contemplate the ones he could see at the moment either. He had a job to do. He had a task, a quest, given to him by his father, the man’s dying wish. 

The quiet sound of a storm rolling in off the bay made him perk up a little. Storms on the island meant the need to find shelter, usually quickly. He glanced from the windows to the lamp on the bedside table and back to the windows again. With the lamp lit, he couldn’t see out the windows that well. He stepped towards the lamp, eyes still studying the reflective glare across the panes of glass. With a few touches, the light was extinguished, plunging the room into darkness. Oliver sank down on the bed, watching the windows, watching the way the curtains fluttered as the wind picked up with the incoming storm. He wrapped himself in the comfort of the dark, feeling more at home than he’d felt since arriving at the house he grew up in. No, he didn’t grow up in this house. He lived here. He’d truly grown up on the island. He had originally planned to sneak out of the house, to refamiliarize himself with the city of his youth. Oliver had ways of seeing the city now that he’d never dreamed of before. Perhaps that would have to wait for another night, one not so tempestuous.

Lian Yu forced him into a cocoon, forced him to change into someone else. Something else. And when he emerged, he was just as at home on the island of purgatory as the rest of her denizens. He was one of them. Now, Oliver Queen was going to bring the hell that was Lian Yu to those who his father had listed as the cancer of Starling City. The prodigal son was dead, and in his place, the monster would right his father’s wrongs… as any dutiful son would.

**Author's Note:**

> For 100 Themes List found [here](https://kathrineroid.wordpress.com/2011/09/25/100-themes-challenge-writing-prompts/).
> 
> Theme: 032. Exploration


End file.
